In the 20th century, Mikhail Baryshnikov leapt to stunning heights, George Balanchine crafted the first distinctly American choreography, and Anna Pavlova’s performance of The Swan enraptured audiences around the world. By contrast, ballet might appear to be less important today than it has been in the past.
While ballet might not reign as the most popular variety of dance class to take the most sought-after style of performance art to enjoy, it remains vital in today’s artistic landscape. The fundamentals of ballet are taught as the technical foundation in a variety of more contemporary dance styles. Besides traditional ballets staged in grand theatres, modern audiences can enjoy ballet through movies, tv, and virtual performances.
Is Interest Dwindling?
In the words of David Bowie, “There’s a brand-new dance, but I don’t know its name.” His sentiment is as true today as it was in the 1980s. The past few decades have seen an explosion in the number and variety of dance styles. From partnered dances, like tango and salsa, to solo styles, like jazz and hip-hop, these once niche techniques have fully hit the mainstream.
Television shows have helped cement the popularity, if not the legitimacy, of once obscure genres of performance. So You Think You Can Dance brought the hype and glamor of American Idol to hopeful dancers auditioning across the country. Dancing With The Stars taught viewers at home the difference between a waltz and a rhumba. The ruthless mothers of Dance Moms got audiences invested in a studio focused on jazz and lyrical competitions. Even RuPaul’s Drag Race expanded American dance pallets, giving viewers a taste of the vogueing style.
The rise of social media platforms with video sharing capabilities has contributed to the diversification. In the 1980s, new dance moves typically had to appear in music videos in order to spread widely. Famous dancers and choreographers are increasingly arising from platforms like YouTube and Tik Tok.
Performers who might not look like dancers in a traditional sense, individuals with disabilities or different body shapes, have found audiences and acclaim online. Nowadays, all it takes is one viral video and a fresh new dance craze is born. The global interconnectivity of the internet has caused once regional styles like hip-hop, K-pop, and Bollywood dance have become worldwide phenomenons (Martinez, 2020).
Dance classes are more popular than ever. In the 5 years preceding 2020, the dance studio industry grew by 3% of its market size (IBIS World, 2021). The types of dance studios experiencing the most growth included those offering fitness classes, ballroom lessons, and Latin-inspired styles.
Ballet might be losing market share in the dance class industry, but not due to a dwindling interest in the classical dance style. Instead, the apparent fall of ballet’s once ubiquity can be attributed to more and more people taking up dance. These days, people of all ages, genders, and backgrounds can learn how to dance. Such a diverse array of students couldn’t possibly all be interested in the same exact school of movement.
From the Stage to the Screen
Despite the popularity of other dance styles in reality tv, ballet remains a popular style of dance to explore in film and television. The dramatic thriller Black Swan won Natalie Portman an Academy Award in 2011. That Oscar winning movie was far from the only ballet focused film released in the decade. First Position (2011), Polina (2016), Leap! (2016), Girl (2018), Nutcracker and the Four Realms (2018), and a remake of Susperia (2018) all premiered in the 2010s.
The 2015 documentary A Ballerina’s Tale followed Misty Copeland, without a doubt the most famous ballerina currently dancing, as she became the American Ballet Theater’s first African American principal dancer. Older movies like Billy Elliot (2000), Center Stage (2000), Fame (1980), and even The Red Shoes (1948) remain popular pieces of ballet themed media as well.
In 2020 alone, Netflix released five ballet focused originals, a staggering number for just one outlet in just one year. Tiny Pretty Things brought the escapism and intrigue of teen drama to the setting of a Chicago ballet school. The steamy, if not cheesy, ballet series was binged en masse by audiences, topping Netflix streaming rankings and TV time charts in December (Prange, 2020). The documentary film Dance Dreams: Hot Chocolate Nutcracker gave a behind the curtain glimpse into the preparation leading up to the Debbie Allen Dance Academy’s award-winning production of The Nutcracker. The Shondaland production was a popular feature in the month of December as well (Obenson, 2020).
The topic of ballet was also explored in international offerings. The Indian film Yeh Ballet dramatized the true story of two teens from Mumbai following their dreams to pursue a career in dance. Spanish language thriller Someone Has to Die sets ballet against the backdrop of 1950s Spain. If just the release of The Queens Gambit alone could trigger a revival of interest in chess in 2020, four original movies and shows about ballet that same year definitely indicate a trend.
Disney Plus also released a documentary series on ballet in 2020. The new show On Pointe follows students of the School of American Ballet. The very next year on network television, a ballerina appeared as a contestant on the 25th season of The Bachelor. Audiences rooted for Alicia Mae Holloway of the Dance Theatre of Harlem as she vied for the heart of bachelor Matt James in the spring of 2021 (Broadwater, 2020).
Recontextualizing Ballet
Ballet classes are no longer just for ballerinas. As one of the oldest techniques in performance art still studied, ballet is the building block of so many schools of dance. Ballet classes serve as lessons in technical conditioning and strength training for students of contemporary styles like lyrical or interpretive dance.
Besides dance students, work out enthusiasts have found uses for ballet training as well. A fusion of ballet warmups and Pilates exercises has synthesized into a new fitness craze: Barre. More popular among adult women than young girls, Barre incorporates classic ballet moves into a hybrid workout for developing long lean muscles and increasing flexibility. Barre classes now rival the popularity of previously in vogue Zumba exercise classes (Thomason, 2021). Many students attend in an attempt to sculpt their bodies to resemble the coveted lithe physiques associated with ballet dancers.
Modernizing Ballet
The ways audiences interact with ballet performances is evolving right alongside the art itself. In 2020, the pandemic highlighted the need for ballet companies to revolutionize the channels of their offerings. Some companies decided to stream ballets and sell tickets to virtual performances. The streaming service MarqueeTV, offering dance, opera, and classical music on demand, helped ballet companies find audiences online. Others decided to partner with local television stations to broadcast their productions (Scher, 2020).
The Ballet Academy of Pittsburgh decided to reschedule every school’s cash cow, a traditionally Christmas adjacent production of The Nutcracker, to a June date in hopes of a coming vaccine by the summer (Scher, 2021). To offset lost revenues from ticket sales, ballet companies and dance academies have adopted nontraditional means of fund raising, like virtual galas.
Ballet dancers themselves have been interacting with audiences in new and exciting ways on and off the stage. As devoted athletes trained in grace and poise, these skilled performers make great public figures. With tireless toil in pursuit of their dream career, ballet dancers can serve as inspiring role models for young fans.
Adult fans are fascinated by the self-discipline and self-care required to achieve the glamor of a ballerina’s stage presence. For this reason, interviews with ballerinas have long been a mainstay for publications like Vogue, ELLE, and Marie Claire. In recent years, ballet dancers have taken to mediums like YouTube to answer audience questions about their career and beauty secrets. Women’s magazine Glamour has capitalized on this trend in their video series On Pointe with Scout Forsythe from the American Ballet Theatre (Glamour, 2021).
